Social and individual learning of helping in humans and other species.
Helping behaviors can be innate, learned by copying others (cultural transmission) or individually learned de novo. These three possibilities are often entangled in debates on the evolution of helping in humans. Here we discuss their similarities and differences, and argue that evolutionary biologists underestimate the role of individual learning in the expression of helping behaviors in humans.
Lehmann
Laurent
L
Department of Biology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA. lehmann@stanford.edu
Foster
Kevin R
KR
Borenstein
Elhanan
E
Feldman
Marcus W
MW
D000818:Animals; D006379:Helping Behavior; D040941:Heredity; D006801:Humans; D007858:Learning